The Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machadowho this Monday won the award Václav Havel of Human Rights which is awarded annually by the Council of Europetoday showed his willingness to “continue fighting alongside the Venezuelan people.”
“I have decided to continue fighting alongside the Venezuelan people,” Machado said before the Council of Europe Assembly, in a speech via videoconference.
The opponent, who is in hiding in her country, added: “I am convinced that it is the right thing to do, that it is my role, and that is why they chose me as their leader for this stage of struggle.”
The award was collected by his daughter, Ana Corina Sosa.
María Corina Machado, founder of the organization ‘Join’ and who could not compete in the presidential elections on July 28 because she was disqualified from holding public office due to an administrative order, stressed the “importance” of the award, not only for her, “but, above all, for all those who fight jointly for the cause of freedom in Venezuela.
And she was “deeply moved, honored and grateful for being the first Latin American to win this distinction.”
The Venezuelan remembered Václav Havelleader during the Prague Spring in 1968 and first president of the Czechoslovak Republic after the fall of communism in that country and assured that “in light of his legacy (…) Venezuelans have identified the root of the problem to defeat the dictatorship.”
“Adhere to our core values and hold the truth as our flag,” he said.
Machado insisted on the president’s “sounding defeat” Nicolas Maduro in the elections last July and in the victory of Edmundo González Urrutiawho “has been forced into exile in Spain” since last September 8.
Since the Council of Europe first granted the Václav Havel to the Belarusian human rights defender, Ales Bialiatski In 2013, the organization has awarded activists from Eastern Europe, Türkiye o China.
In previous editions the Turkish journalist won it Osman Kavala; the russian opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza (2022); the activist for the rights of the Uyghur minority Ilham Tohti (2019); or the yazidi Nadia Mourad (2016). EFE (I)
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